National debt will be £1.5 trillion by end of Parliament

There is certainly no shortage of advice being given to the Chancellor in the lead up to this year’s Budget. The question still remains though, what should he do?

It is clear that our economy faces major structural problems. The government is failing to close the deficit and a national debt of around £700bn when the coalition took office will have increased to around £1.5 trillion by the end of the Parliament. Including offbalance-sheet liabilities, such as public sector pensions, the figure rises to an eye-watering £5 trillion.

Debt repayments this year total a heady £48bn (a similar sum to the budget of the Department for Education and around half that of the Department for Health). This gives some indication of just what a burden this debt places on us.